Voices of Our Time:Ian Bostridge

Rating:
Summary: A Lovely Recital
Review: Ian Bostridge is a unique phenomenon, more than a singer, he sort of paints with his voice. His recordings of Schubert are marvelous, here one can see him perform these, and lieder by Wolf, live. On CD, one grasps that he comes at the songs with a great intelligence, but on the DVD, one can see an integrated physical take on these songs, with his entire body part of the performance. Rather than standing properly as he sings, he weaves his head and body all over the place, making the DVD a true contributory companion to the audio recordings. He is gripping in a way not usually demonstrated by lieder singers, perhaps another trait he shares with his stated hero, Fischer-Dieskau. In short, a recommended purchase, which pairs nicely with the Dawn Upshaw DVD of the series- here, standard repertoire with a novel performance style, there more standard performance with an adventurous song list. Needless, to say, seeing Vignoles in performance, especially in the Erlkonig, is very worthwhile. As with all the DVDs in this series, the between song chatter adds little, on this particular collection, they are recorded at a much louder volume than the recital and as such are a bit jarring, but overall this is a highly recommmended purchase.